Networks such as the Internet are made up of autonomous systems, consisting of a network under control of an administrative entity. Messages such as BGP messages are received by routers that speak the BGP protocol and that allow the current state of the network of autonomous systems to be identified. Each BGP speaker in an autonomous system (AS) (the “home AS”) provides to the other BGP speakers in that AS (I)BGP messages that each describes a link emanating from that BGP speaker to another AS (the link being defined by the IP addresses at each end of the link), an address or a block of several contiguous addresses specified by a prefix to which the message relates, and an indication that the message is announcing the existence of a route for that address or block of addresses that starts at the indicated link (an “announce message”), or an indication that the existence of such a route is being withdrawn (a “withdraw message”). Each (I)BGP message also includes as attributes an ordered list of nodes that describe the path to which the message corresponds. The nodes include a border router of the home AS, the next hop router of the router in the next AS to which the border router is in communication, and AS identifiers that describe the autonomous system of the next hop router and any other autonomous systems a communication having as its destination address, the address in the message, or an address in the block of addresses in the message, should pass through on its way to its intended destination from the home AS if it uses the path advertised in the message. Communications travel over links between each adjacent pair of nodes.
When large numbers of BGP messages are received and propagated as (I)BGP messages, they can slow down the processing of communications being forwarded by the routers, and the source of the messages may also be causing certain communications to be dropped. Identifying the source of the problem that caused the messages is made difficult due to the large number of such messages. It isn't unusual to have in excess of a million messages pertaining to a single problem. If multiple problems occur near each other in time, the task of identifying the source of the problems is made more difficult due to the fact that the messages resulting from all of the problems will be mixed together.
It can be desirable to allow a system administrator in one AS to identify one or more sources of BGP messages that may indicate an error or problem in either that same AS (the “home AS”) or an error or problem in another AS. The identification of the node that is most likely the source of such errors can allow that system administrator to either correct the errors in the home AS, reroute the communications so that they avoid the problem AS, or to request corrective measures by the operator of another AS to avoid the performance problems that will result if the errors persist. It can also be helpful to view an animation of the actual result of the problem.